


Zack Don't Surf

by dancinbutterfly



Category: World War Z - Max Brooks
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Post-War, Alternate Universe - Zombies, Boyfriends, F/M, Family, Father-Daughter Relationship, If I say its safe to surf this beach - its safe to surf this beach!, Interviews, Love, Meaning that I was around surfers and beach culture my whole life, Mentions of Zombie violence, Mentions of mercy killings, Military, Misses Clause Challenge, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Oral History, POV Female Character, Post-War, Real life experience adjacent, Surfing, Swimming, The pink house is real too - though no longer pink., There were military around all the time too because NAS and Eglin Air Force Base are right there., Unplanned Pregnancy, Zombie Apocalypse, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 11:15:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1093248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancinbutterfly/pseuds/dancinbutterfly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pensacola Beach, Florida: An interview with one of the founding members of The Santa Rosa Island Surf Patrol, the first prevention unit to use surfboards as a means to police and prevent zombies emerging from the Gulf of Mexico from reaching the shore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Zack Don't Surf

**Author's Note:**

  * For [queenofinsanity6](https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenofinsanity6/gifts).



> The only thing I could do was that even remotely worked and felt in keeping with the reality that Mr Brooks has worked into his text was to write a story that came from my personal history. I grew up in the area so all the details are as accurate as I could make them. All of the characters are named in honor of a few of my now-deceased classmates who didn't survive our proverbial war. Needless to say, I really hope that I do this place and the people there even a little justice. 
> 
> To queenofinsanity6: I know this isn't North Korea(I JUST DON'T KNOW WHAT HAPPENED THERE, MAN, I JUST DONT KNOW) but it's what I've got. I really hope you like it.
> 
> Thanks to AlterEgon for the swift and speedy beta.

_[Pensacola Beach sits on the west end of a forty mile long barrier island that is less than a mile in diameter. Formerly one of the rising resort locations in northwest Florida, there are only a handful of high-rises remaining and those now stand empty in favor of single, sometimes double family homes on stilts that are easier to defend and are designed with both hurricanes and the infected in mind. On one end of the island are the remains of the 19th century fort where Geronimo was held after his capture, and the other is off-limits and property of the US military - both of which were utilized during the war as strategic locations._

 _Before the crisis, the primary commerce came from tourism and the life expenses brought in by the Naval Air Station Pensacola on the mainland. NAS has since tripled in size and is the main southeastern Naval hub in North America. Thanks to the strong military presence and the relative closeness to Tallahassee, one of the best protected eastern cities in the country, Pensacola Bay is the largest shipping port in the south. Due to these factors, inland Pensacola and the suburbs surrounding it have had the fastest growth of any area east of the Rocky Mountains but because of the danger of natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornados and tidal waves increased by climate change and the constant threat of zombie movement out of the Gulf of Mexico, the island itself remains lightly populated by comparison._

_Jenna, 27, has brown hair with blond streaks that come from extended hours spent in sun. We’re in the back room of a small pro-surf shop on the Santa Rosa Sound side of the island. She has been working on a board since I arrived. It smells of wax and sealant and there is a lightweight water-proofed semi-automatic rifle with a make-shift bayonet hanging from the same hook as a pair of board-shorts on a peg near the door. A picture of herself, her eight year old daughter and her mother are tacked on the wall above her head in a place of honor next to a picture of a young blond man smiling out at the water. Jenna doesn’t look up from her work as I settle down beneath the pictures for the interview, though she has kindly switched from a loud electric saw to a wooden hand tool.]_

**Me:** You're part of the surf patrol. Does that mean you’re Navy or Marines?

 **Jenna:** No. You’d think so, right? I mean, NAS is right there. The fact that the Navy’s got such a huge presence in the Pensacola area is pretty much the only reason there’s any town left at all, but no, man. No. I don’t really do well with, uh, you know, that kind of discipline. Authority issues. 

I was really young when the outbreak started so I spent a lot of time following orders as a kid. “Jenna, don’t go outside. Jenna be quiet or the Zack will hear us. Jenna, don’t touch that. Jenna, get in the car. Jenna, you can’t leave, there’s a curfew,” that sort of thing. As soon as it was even remotely safe for me to stop listening to what people told me to do…well, I was a teenager you know?

I was just so tired of living like a dog in a kennel. We were staying in this big, pink house out on the east side of the island by the Portofino Towers with three other families when I was maybe fourteen. It was huge. There was a tennis court across the street that was part of the property. The people who used to live there had a room full of surfboards. I spent my whole life with the ocean right there but I couldn’t go in. The Gulf of Mexico was always full of carriers and battleships and Zack that wandered in could just wander right back out. It was like that poem - water water everywhere only I was finally like, “F*** it. I’m going in.” The house was right on the water so I just went down the back porch while the adults were distracted, ran along the beach about two blocks, and charged into the water with a board three times as big as I was. 

Looking back, I can see how unbelievably stupid it was, but at the time it was the best day of my life. I have no idea how long I was out there. At least four hours, probably more. I remember that it was dark before I got in but that I got up on the board twice and I felt like I was flying, free for the first time in my whole life. Then I got inside and my mom caught me by the shoulders and slapped me then screamed in my face. I don’t even remember what she said, I was so shocked because she’d never hit me before. Then she pulled me into a hug and started to cry. I remember that part really well because my mom never cried. We lost my dad and big brother in the Great Panic, and maybe she cried then, but I didn’t see it. This was the first time and I remember really hating myself for scaring her like that; I was all she had left. I didn’t go out again for almost a year. 

**Me:** But you did go back.

 **Jenna:** Yeah. I couldn’t not. The whole world was so damn ugly, but the Gulf of Mexico, it never stopped being green and the sand is always white underneath when you get bodies or trash cleared away. It’s why I started surfing again and it's why I’m still on the patrol, even after all that’s happened. 

The outbreak and war has created a shortage of really beautiful things in this world, you know? We’ve got to do something to take care of what’s left and I f***ing hate the idea of Zack in my ocean. They keep moving even underwater you know that right? Of course you do. Never mind. So there are millions, maybe a billion, of the walking dead under the surface trudging through saltwater and seaweed making their way to the shore, every day.

It gets cold here, but not Antarctica cold. We can’t freeze them out and we can’t stop them from coming out so the uniforms over at NAS first put together the patrols. Those are the military ones you’re thinking about. Those patrols took volunteers, though. There were too many dead for them not to. If you were old enough to hold a gun, they’d take you.

The youngest kid in our patrol was about eleven but he was good. His family had come down south from Alabama thinking the water at their back would be a good safety net but he was the only one of the seven of them who lived through the war. By the end of it, that kid could shoot like Annie Oakley. The surf patrols, though, that was my idea, as far as I know. Pensacola wasn’t exactly famous for its surf community before Zack. We’re not Malibu or the North Shore. I can’t even imagine waves like that. I’ve never gotten west of Biloxi but we do okay with our waves. Besides I had never heard of anyone else with a Zack patrol like ours even after I got in touch with the surfers out west.

 **Me:** The Santa Rosa Island Surf Patrol is the first one recorded. There’s one in every surfing community from here to the Gold Coast now, last I heard.

 **Jenna:** It got all the way to Australia? Awesome. I didn’t know that.

 **Me:** Where did the idea come from?

 **Jenna:** Watching an old VHS copy of Surf Ninjas actually. Did you ever see that movie? It's ridiculous but so awesome. Rob Schneider and Leslie Nielsen from back before Hollywood decided they didn’t want to do anything that wasn’t borderline propaganda anymore, when movies could just be about nothing. Anyway, they fight ninjas on surfboards. It’s awesome and I thought “We can do that.” Ash, he was my boyfriend, was the one who managed to get the guns that could handle water exposure through a friend of his from school who was in special forces - a SEAL maybe? I don’t know. There’s not much spec ops presence at the NAS. Another guy in the group, Brandon collected blades for those of us who were actually going into the water. He can talk you out of your first-born if you let him. It’s the only explanation I have for how he got people to give up their weapons voluntarily.

We did a bunch of test-runs in safe waters first, shooting at fish and stingrays, working on staying balanced while firing, while we shook each other’s boards so hard we would’ve fallen off without the practice, but that doesn’t really help that first shock of a Zack hand coming up out of the water and grabbing your board. It all stops, you know, your heart and your breathing and the waves and time. Everything stops and then it goes too fast and then most of the time you’ve either destroyed the brain or you’ve been bitten and that’s it. End of story. 

_[She stops and comes around the board to stand in front of me. She lifts her foot and plants it high on the wall near where I’m sitting. There are deep scars in her calf with the exact spacing needed for human fingers.]_

Sometimes they try to grab on. This guy on the team, Adam, lost his right foot and was infected anyway, poor b******. His doctor flooded his IV with morphine at his request and he went out easy but still. It happens. This is the worst I ever had. I’d just found out I was pregnant with Emily and was distracted. It got a hold on me and Ash was right near by and he tried to help, but if he got on my board it’d knock us both over and then we'd be shark-bait if the Zack didn’t get us first. Sharks can smell a single drop of blood in a million gallons of water and I was just a mess. By the time I managed to get it off me, I was starting to get tunnel vision and I passed out on the way back to shore. Ash managed to help me get there somehow. I don’t know how. He never told me, wouldn’t answer when I asked. 

We had a screaming fight after that in the hospital about my place on the surf patrol now that we were going to be parents. After all, every time one of us lives through one of these it’s a miracle because people get turned from smaller scratches all the time. Fingernails are just old keratin and that’s all dead and Solanum only lives in living tissue. The issue’s if there’s live cells introduced to a wound which has happened often enough. Who hasn’t known someone who either killed themselves or were put down because of the exact same kind of wound? I was so fucking lucky. Ash said we shouldn’t push it with a baby on the way. 

I was…stubborn. In the end, I figured if I wasn't out there, someone else would be and I didn't want him out there without me. In the end, I made the brilliant decision that if I was still able to paddle out and my center of gravity would let me up, I would do it. He was furious. I made him cry too, he was so angry and so scared of what could happen. To this day, that's my biggest regret - making these people who loved me cry over me. Ash couldn’t stop me so he didn’t try. He didn't even give me a hard time about it. It’s part of why I love him.

_[Jenna blinks and looks up at the ceiling of the shop. She pushes back and puts her foot on the ground. She is still blinking but tears escape her eyes anyway. She wipes at her face roughly and turns back to her board.]_

He was bitten on patrol when Emily was five. We were kids. We thought we’d live forever. Stupid. God, we were so stupid. We thought we were safe. Everyone is starting to feel really, truly safe. We hadn’t had anything come out of the water in almost eight months. Then this big one grabs the side of his board and manages to tip him in instead of the usual claw and crawl. 

When he came up it was almost two minutes later and he was gasping and - and- it was dead but it got him on his arm. Jesus. I just- We had a day. One really good day before the headaches started. I’ve got most of it recorded. He said a lot of things Emily’s going to want to hear when she’s older. He put her to bed and told her he would always love her and would be with her even when he wasn’t there and then we left her with my mom and went out to the beach. 

That’s how we met, surfing the same break. He carried my board to my car for me. I thought he was a gentleman, he thought I looked hot tethered to a longboard all wet. I was sixteen, he was nineteen and we ended up in the back of his truck two days later. We didn’t have any condoms. The war just ended, where would we have gotten any? I don’t think they even started making them again until a few years ago. I can’t believe I didn’t get pregnant sooner, looking back. God, idiots. Both of us.

We put the boards in that same truck that last night to drive down towards Fort Pickens where no one would see. It was so freaking beautiful out that night, I remember. It was warm enough we didn’t need wetsuits and the surf was smooth. Our boards cut through the water like knives. We watched the sun come up over the water and then I came back to shore alone.

 **Me:** Is there a concern of him turning up on a future patrol?

 **Jenna:** No. None. 

_[She steps back from the board and beckons me over. It looks like a regular surfboard to me but she seems pleased with it.]_

**Me:** What am I looking at?

 **Jenna:** Right here. This hole - built in machete sheath for your standard sized blade. I’ve got one on the other side that will fit most handguns and when I finish with the sealants it’ll be waterproof, all figured into the weight balance of the board. The guys out in Hawaii are making them like this now and I thought I’d give it a try based on their schematics. What do you think?

 **Me:** I think it’s smart.

 **Jenna:** Yeah. Yeah, God, let’s hope so. I’ve been trying to be smarter. Stupid’s only gotten me so far and Emily, she wants to learn how to surf. I don’t think I can say no.

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from Apocalypse Now and a fantastic scene involving Robert Duvall's character Lt. Col. Kilgore upon arriving at a chaotic warzone in Vietcong territory and deciding to surf there despite the danger because he declares that "Charlie don't surf." Seems like Jenna would feel the same way about Zack. [You can watch it here.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWW1FeT1EyQ>You%20can%20view%20it%20here.</a>)


End file.
